International symposium -
Icons of Modern Art. The Shchukin Collection.
Online registration. Seating subject to availability.
The Fondation Louis Vuitton is holding an international symposium centred on its exhibition Icons of Modern Art. The Shchukin Collection. The symposium will be held on Friday and Saturday, 3 and 4 February 2017, in the Fondation’s Auditorium.
Conceived and hosted by Anne Baldassari, Curator of both the exhibition and the programme of associated events exploring arts and sciences, the symposium will examine a specific theme in depth each day.
• The first day will feature a roundtable focusing on the exhibition and principles of presentation and the academic and artistic concepts involved in the project.
• The second day will focus on the study of the life and work of Sergei Shchukin, and consider the influence of the Collection on the founding and development of the Russian avant-garde.
The symposium will provide an opportunity to assess and bring together the research, discussions and proposals that took place in Paris, Moscow and Saint Petersburg and which marked the exhibition’s preparations and ultimate public. They will further enrich the contribution made by the research based catalogue, which was published on the occasion of the exhibition.
PROGRAMME
FRIDAY, 3 FEBRUARY
- 8:15-8:30 a.m.: Welcome address by Anne Baldassari, Curator of the exhibition and Scientific Director of the symposium, and Suzanne Pagé, Artistic Director of the Fondation Louis Vuitton.
- 8:30-9:30 a.m.: Exclusive private view for attendees of the Symposium and tour of the galleries of the Icons of Modern Art. The Shchukin Collection exhibition.
Start of roundtables
- 9:30-9:45 a.m.: Anne Baldassari outlines the symposium’s objectives and presents the speakers.
- 9:45-10:45 a.m.: Anne Baldassari reviews the key scientific and historical principles and the scenographic and museographic choices made in the design of the exhibition and the catalogue. She also talks about the project’s development in the architectural context of the Frank Gehry building and Daniel Buren’s in situ work. Lastly, she provides greater context for the objectives of the multimedia, dance and music programming associated with the exhibition and explores how exhibitions have become new platforms for living, ephemeral and performing arts combining architecture, visual arts, cinema, music and dance.
- 10:45-11:45 a.m.: Irving Lavin, Professor Emeritus, Art History Chair at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, presents a video of his conversation with Frank Gehry, architect of the Fondation Louis Vuitton building. Through a discussion of Gehry’s work and its place in the history of modern architecture, he examines the spatial dialogue between the building’s architecture and the museography of the exhibition.
- 11:45 a.m.-12:45 p.m.: Daniel Buren, the artist whose monumental in situ work, L’Observatoire de la lumière, graces the sails of the Fondation and is one of the keys to understanding the exhibition’s deeper themes, offers an interpretation of his work in another context: the artistic revolutions among the 20th century’s French and Russian avant-gardes.
- 12:45-1:15 p.m. : Erik Boulatov, an artist belonging to the Muscovite “non-conformist” and “conceptualist” movements, offers his interpretation of the exhibition by analysing the works of the Russian avant-garde and their role in contemporary creation in Russia since the 1970s. He also positions his work in this historical context.
- 1:15-1:30 p.m.: Discussion with symposium audience
- 1:30-3:00 p.m.: Break (free exhibition viewing time)
- 3:00-3:30 p.m.: Christian Comte, sculptor and filmmaker, presents his film Nijinski in his most famous roles. This film, an assemblage of several thousand original photographs transformed into moving images, brings new life to the dancer’s world of sensitivity and subtle sophistication.
- 3:30-5:00 p.m.: Nicolas Le Riche, Director of the Paris Opera Ballet until 2014, Director of the LAAC - Atelier d’Art Chorégraphique, presents the “ballet-lecture” developed around Nijinsky’s Afternoon of a Faun (1912). This performance is followed by a discussion between the dancers, musicians, actors and the audience.
- 5:00-6:00 p.m.: Peter Greenaway, filmmaker and director, present the principles of the multimedia work created for the exhibition, on the relationship between Sergei Shchukin and Henri Matisse with respect to the commission for La Danse and La Musique (1909-1910). His presentation provides a broader perspective on creating a “visual language” combining cinema, video installation and performance and, by disrupting our perceptual framework, generates new horizons of understanding.
- 6:00-7:00 p.m.: Discussion with symposium audience
SATURDAY, 4 FEBRUARY
- 8:30-9:00 a.m.: Anne Baldassari and Suzanne Pagé welcome the participants
Start of roundtables
- 9:00-9:15 a.m.: Anne Baldassari provides an introduction and presents the day’s overall intention and the scheduled speakers
- 9:15-9:45 a.m.: Anne Distel, Heritage Curator, discusses the Parisian art scene at the turn of the century, focusing on the relationship between art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel and Sergei Shchukin by presenting previously unpublished correspondence.
- 9:45-10:15 a.m.: André-Marc Delocque-Fourcaud, biographer of Sergei Shchukin and grandson of the collector, presents the Shchukin siblings: Ivan, Piotr, Dimitri and Sergei.
- 10:15-10:45 a.m.: Anna Poznanskya, Curator of 19th-Century European Painting at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, looks back on the first collection of modern works assembled by Sergei Shchukin.
- 10:45-11:15 a.m.: Natalia Semenova, art historian and biographer of Sergei Shchukin, examines the relationship and emulative rivalry between collectors Sergei Shchukin and Michel Morosov.
- 11:15-11:45 a.m.: Tatiana Yudenkova, Director of the Department of Paintings from the Second Half of the 19th-Early 20th Century at Moscow’s State Tretyakov Gallery, provides the history and circumstances of the 1907 bequest of Sergei Shchukin’s collection to the State Tretyakov Gallery.
- 11:45 a.m.-12:30 p.m.: Albert Kostenevitch, Curator of the Department of French Painting Collections from the Late 19th-Early 20th Century at the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, addresses Shchukin’s commission to Matisse for La Danse and La Musique (1909-1910) and reviews research on this important moment in the history of the Shchukin Collection.
- 12:30-1:00 p.m.: Discussion with symposium audience
- 1:00-3:00 p.m.: Break (free exhibition viewing time)
- 3:00-3:30 p.m.: Alexis Petoukhov, Curator of the Collections of Modern French Paintings at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, reconstructs exhibitions of the Shchukin Collection paintings between 1919 and 1930 at the Trubetskoy Palace (after being nationalised in 1918), then at the Morosov mansion when the collections were merged in 1928.
- 3:30-4:00 p.m.: Mikhaïl Dedinkin, Curator of the Department of Western and European Art at the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, presents the history of the Shchukin Collection from 1930 to the late 1950s. This period of warmer relations marked a significant revival in institutional and public interest in Western art collections.
- 4:00-4:30 p.m.: Jean-Claude Marcadé, Doctor of Arts, Research Director Emeritus at France’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, specialist in the Russian avant-garde, discusses how the Shchukin Collection was received by Russian avant-garde artists, especially Kazimir Malevich, starting in 1908.
- 4:30-5:00 p.m.: Gérard Conio, Professor Emeritus at the Université de Nancy 2, specialist in the Russian avant-garde, analyses the unique place held by Picasso’s work in the Shchukin Collection through the writings of Aksyonov, Tarabukin and Eisenstein.
- 5:00-5:30 p.m.: Maria Tsantsanoglou, Director of the Thessaloniki State Museum of Contemporary Art - Costaki Collection, offers a comparative presentation of the Sergei Shchukin and George Costakis collections.
- 5:30-6:00 p.m.: Andreï Sarabianov, Doctor of Art History, specialist in the Russian avant-garde, and Irina Pravkina, Director of the Encyclopédie des Avant-Gardes Russes, present the research objectives and philosophy of the major collective scientific project, L’Encyclopédie des avant-gardes russes, that is being published.
- 6:00-6:30 p.m.: Igor Sokologorski, Associate Professor of Philosophy and art historian, concludes this one-day conference with a review of the contemporary creative scene in Russia and key chapters in the evolution of “unofficial Russian art, from the thaw to present day”.
- 6:30-7:30 p.m.: Symposium conclusion and discussion with symposium audience